The Official 5830 Thread!

spirits247 · 12 May 2010 at 01:14

Best to check - AMD can limit overclocks in their official drivers via the vendor ID, so you would think it would be permitted.

Did some more research - the mem on these boards is rated at 1000Mhz (4000Mhz effective) and not the same as the 1200Mhz mem on the 5870.

That means it's already overclocked on the Powercolor card.

After some strange crashing in 3Dmark03 (but not 05), I had to reduce my mem clocks down to 1150. Strange thing is I can run some things with it at 1300!!! But it's only 100% reliable at 1150.

Also after extensive testing I had to reduce my core down to 870!!!

That's from 950 I initially had it set at! Meaker was right - these don't clock that well.

I've settled on 850/1100 - a little down on tested stable speeds of 870/1150 just to be sure. Also same core speed as the default clocks of 5870 and 4890 from last gen. The mem is running 100Mhz above its rated speed. Got my friends to the same - I thought mine was better but it was just inconsistent in how it crashed.

So, I'm not sure it is worth overclocking these anyway. Others seem to be getting higher - but have they tested thoroughly. I found the longer I tested, the more I had to come down! Perhaps they have better power delivery and voltages or something!

spirits247 · 12 May 2010 at 01:30

I'm going to test this card with some benches once I up my E6850 CPU back from default 3Ghz to 3.6Ghz.

At 3Ghz it got 60K in 3Dmark06 and 20K in 05. Can't test 06 as it's offline at the moment round my friends house and it won't give a score without the net. Upping the CPU speed will increase these by a bit.

Muel · 12 May 2010 at 01:33

It looks like the Sapphire version is the one to have for overclocking: Linky.

I doubt I'll bother overclocking it then, putting an extra 25mhz on the core and 50mhz on the memory just isn't enough for me to bother trying.

I'm fancying a crossfire setup now, although I think I'll need to OC the CPU to stop it bottlenecking, on my 4670 the CPU would only go to 30% load in any game, now it goes to around 60%.

I read an article earlier and forgot to post the link in the first post, where some of the results they were getting showed that 5830s in Crossfire had a scaling of over 100%, and all results were over 90% roughly, so a good one to go for if you fancy crossfire on the cheap.

EDIT: I'll run 3Dmark06 tommorrow aswell, it'll be interesting to see how much the rest of the spec effects the score.

spirits247 · 12 May 2010 at 01:44

I wonder if that Sapphire one was a hand picked "Golden Sample" sent for review. I don't think it has a way to change voltage, but it might have had a higher one set before review.

Or perhaps you can get better clocks out of a different tool? I think some tools disable the power saving feature that varies the clocks all the time. Who knows, I'll just keep playing around and see where it gets. I'll try that afterburner and AMD tool thingy.

In that review he also cheated a little - he put the fan speed up to 100% before overclocking. Who would run their fan at that speed all the time? I overclock only to default fan speeds! I like fans that react to GPU temps.

spirits247 · 12 May 2010 at 01:58

Nice to know about xfire - although I'd never manage it in this case without a fight. Plus my X-Fi elite card in the bottom slot would cover too much of the fan. The cool temps make these cards a good candidate for xfire - just need to come down to a price to challenge the 5770's. At £160 they might just do that!

cainer · 12 May 2010 at 08:51

Muel said:
EDIT: I'll run 3Dmark06 tommorrow aswell, it'll be interesting to see how much the rest of the spec effects the score.

3d06 score is more dependant on CPU speed than gfx core/mem speeds.. i get ~24,000 @ 3.2ghz and ~28,000+ @ 3.8ghz, bumping up the core/mem speeds on gfx doesnt affect it anywhere near that amount

spirits247 · 12 May 2010 at 11:15

cainer said:
3d06 score is more dependant on CPU speed than gfx core/mem speeds.. i get ~24,000 @ 3.2ghz and ~28,000+ @ 3.8ghz, bumping up the core/mem speeds on gfx doesnt affect it anywhere near that amount

Oh well I won't bother.

I guess games are all that counts anyway - playable frame rates. Once your frame rates are too slow -> upgrade.

And with this 5830, all my games feel playable at high settings.

Hope it handles newer dx11 titles ok.

Muel · 12 May 2010 at 11:56

cainer said:
3d06 score is more dependant on CPU speed than gfx core/mem speeds.. i get ~24,000 @ 3.2ghz and ~28,000+ @ 3.8ghz, bumping up the core/mem speeds on gfx doesnt affect it anywhere near that amount

I just got just under 17k, everything on stock settings, pretty happy with that really.

Meaker · 12 May 2010 at 12:50

spirits247 said:
I wonder if that Sapphire one was a hand picked "Golden Sample" sent for review. I don't think it has a way to change voltage, but it might have had a higher one set before review.

Or perhaps you can get better clocks out of a different tool? I think some tools disable the power saving feature that varies the clocks all the time. Who knows, I'll just keep playing around and see where it gets. I'll try that afterburner and AMD tool thingy.

In that review he also cheated a little - he put the fan speed up to 100% before overclocking. Who would run their fan at that speed all the time? I overclock only to default fan speeds! I like fans that react to GPU temps.

Well my ram clocks go all the way up to 1350-1400mhz so I don't know. Core goes to 1000-1025 at stock voltage.

If anyone was interested I could put the card up on the MM.

It could come with an HR-03GT or stock cooler and a voucher for MW2.

Meaker · 12 May 2010 at 12:53

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y143/Meaks/DSCN2492.jpg

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y143/Meaks/DSCN2493.jpg

spirits247 · 12 May 2010 at 15:44

Nice heatsink and ramsinks on that card Meaker. To go that high on stock volts, Sapphire must have raised the voltage from default.

Powercolor seems to have the default lower voltages - 870 without voltmod has been mentioned for other 58xx series cards, which is very similar to these Powercolor 5830's we have here. Or perhaps there is a varience in the quality of chips. I'd like to raise my overclock without a physical voltmod, but not sure what's holding me back as people seem to be getting different results all over the net. It might be even something like motherboard or PSU vdroop that can make the difference!

I'm not afraid of flashing a new bios, or even editing it, but there is not enough info around the web at the moment to know the way to go.

Muel · 13 May 2010 at 07:18

Another couple of interesting articles:

5830s in Crossfire - Interestingly some of the result show the scaling to be greater than 100%.

5830s in Crossfire Again - This time similar results, with crossfire scaling sometimes going above 100%

Muel · 14 May 2010 at 08:19

Little update for the PowerColor users:

Dear Muel,

If using auto tune in ATIOverdrive in CCC, then it will not void the warranty. If your system became unstable after auto tune, please adjust it back to default speed.

Here you can download the latest driver for 5830, http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx.

Best Regards,
Powercolor

So if you use Autotune, it doesn't void the warrenty. But if you were to set the speeds manually in the same app, would they be able to tell it hasn't been auto-tuned?

I'm still not sure whether to bother, if you can't get to 900/1200 and beyond it seems a bit pointless. :/

I don't really overclock any more, partly because I can only get 12% extra on my CPU and didn't see any real gain overclocking the motherboard, but the last time I did the constant crashing and rebooting ended up corrupting my kernel and giving me radom blue screens when I was back at stock.

I'm more inclined just to leave it and get another at some point and crossfire it.

spirits247 · 14 May 2010 at 10:28

Thanks for the update and Powercolors official stance. I thought that would be the case.

Although I would be very interested to see what overclock you manage to get with your 5830, I don't want to see you have any problems that affect your computer and install.

As I said above, mine is in a dedicated gaming PC, so overclocking is not an issue as all the important stuff is on my work PC which is definitely not overclocked. I overclock my gaming PC as a kind of hobby.

Muel · 14 May 2010 at 10:58

Well it's looking like I'm going to have to reinstall my OS soon, as I did it a week or so ago to go to a Dual Boot system using 64bit W7 and 32bit XP. It works fine, but W7 definately loads slower than before and I've had a couple of system freezes and hangups. XP was only for a couple of games I can't get to run properly on W7, and I'm not that bothered about losing them.

Think I might have a play with it, just to see what kind of overclock I can get it to before wiping it again.

ravine78 · 15 May 2010 at 11:44

Muel said:
I woke up this morning, wandered into the office and there was a package sitting on my desk, I'm assuming my Dad brought it back from work early.

Anyway i got it fitted, JUST fits in an Antec 300. I had to move my hard drive and fit the power cables to it first, then slot it in at an angle and just jimmy it about until it would go into position. It's actually not all that snug, it's got a good 20mm of clearance from the hdd bays all round, just the power connectors that made it a pain.

Anyways I only had a bit of time to try it out so I haven't really tested it, but it's noticeably better than the 4670, which is nice.

Haven't checked temps or anything yet though either, I'm guessing it's going to be pretty toasty at the moment, the airflow is pretty dire...

Hi Muel,

What sort of frames are you getting with 1680 and 1920 with high textures and anti aliasing at x4?

Muel · 15 May 2010 at 12:41

What kinda test are you talking? I'm not sure on numbers but here are my impressions.

COD4 1920x1200, all settings maxed out. Very smooth gameplay, the occasional lag but it's not like dropping framerates, the screen freezes for upto half a second. This is only very occasional though, the rest of the time I get the impression my 60hz monitor is restricting it.

Crysis Demo 1680x1050 (can't force it to go upto 1920x1200), very good on high settings, and playable at very high but it's only making around 40fps at a rough guess. I run it at medium settings anyway because I can't really see the difference between the textures and it turns off the motion blur.

spirits247 · 15 May 2010 at 15:43

I'm actually having problems with my 5830. Sometimes it runs flawless, but other times I get these strange lags in 3D where the picture freezes; it forces me to hit reset, after which the machine won't post properly (it hangs).

It did it the first time I installed the card, so I reset the CMOS and it worked. But it's now started doing it more often. I have to keep restarting the machine until it starts up again. Resetting the CMOS makes no difference. If I leave the machine off for a few hours it also starts up again. Pop in an older card and no problems.

It's a bit like this issue: http://www.overclock.net/ati/694344-ati-sapphire-5830-booting-problems.html

I know it's not power related, because this rig ran a GTX 280 which uses about a 100W more. Plus I have a 800W quad rail PSU with 20A on each rail. The machine isn't overclocked at the moment - running an MSI P45 Platinum.

The problem is far worse if I overclock the card slightly. I'm beginning to think it's a compatibility problem between the card and the motherboard, but MSI haven't released a new bios in ages. Might be the card itself. I'll have to investigate more.

I know it's related to the card because nothing else has changed - fresh install of OS. This rig ran a GTX 280 without issues for a year.

Muel · 15 May 2010 at 22:32

Ahh that's a right arse! I reckon the RMA rate might be pretty high with these cards, if it's true that they're often made out of fubared 5870s.

Tute · 16 May 2010 at 02:27

Muel said:
The old 4870

That made me double take - quite possibly the world's shortest HD4870?